Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Airing of the Grievances

I was doing a meme of Caroline's called "My Year in Fannish Favorites" when I came across a question so big it deserved a post on its own: Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? There were so many fuck-ups to choose from just involving Marvel and DC, and as it is Dec 23rd and I have been watching Seinfeld all day I thought I'd go ahead and give this one it's own post.

So this year Marvel and DC have disappointed me in the following ways:

First, there's Blackest Night. The 2009 lead-up to Blackest Night was fucking gold. Rage of the Red Lanterns, Sins of the Star Sapphire and the BRILLIANT Agent Orange storyline are still some of the best Green Lantern stuff I've ever read. I even like that fucking FCBD story with Barry and Hal at Bruce's grave. The crossover itself sucked shit. I stopped reading when I realized that the White Lanterns weren't going to be recognizably as horrible as the Black Lanterns, and Johns lost the potential moral of the story, but not after being horribly dismayed by:

Hal's prominence over Kyle in Blackest Night. After two crossovers that centered on Hal and Kyle, suddenly it's Hal and Sinestro. It's like a crossover trilogy bait-and-switch trick (and Marvel pulled this shit too).

Katma Tui wasn't actually coming back to life, she'd just be a Black Lantern for a couple issues.

Soranik bringing Kyle back to life by way of Miri's ability to manipulate love energy rather than her impressive medical skill.

The massive WHAT THE FUCK of Wonder Woman being the Star Sapphire while the Atom is an Indigo Lantern. No, Greg Rucka could not save that.

Then when we get to Brightest Day they kill off the better Atom, and bury him in a matchbox. So cheerful.

Beyond that, they put Judd Winick on Power Girl, which used to be one of my favorite reads.

Stephanie Brown is still Batgirl (yeah, I said it), Cassandra Cain is still not back.

I was horribly let down by the entire Flash series, which I am still picking up for Manapul's art.

And of course, Wonder Woman's relaunch which has been an incredible miss for far too many reasons to list here.

A lot of people have asked Tom Brevoort on Formspring about Lorna being Magneto's daughter, and he pretty consistently said he thought it was forced and unnatural. He also, early on, stated there were no plans to bring her into Children's Crusade but I can't find that link. It makes me a little sad that they're ignoring this rich mine of soap opera drama, and it makes me a little worried that someone's going to retcon it away again and Lorna will become the Power Girl of the Marvel Universe.

They squandered numerous opportunities to bring Jean Grey back to life.

Second Coming and Hope Summers didn't really do it for me.

They let Greg Land do the covers to their Women of Marvel issues.

They continue to hire Greg Land.

The Massive Fucking Lie told by Quicksilver wasn't resolved by the finale of the series he told it in, and instead they decided to carry it over to another series. All of this, of course, is giving me the impression that there is no plan to exonerate Quicksilver for Son of M in Children's Crusade, because I find it so hard to believe they're dragging such a thing out when someone has a clean mind control explanation up their sleeves.

The topper, though, was that Scarlet Witch wasn't the big reveal in Seige. Instead, for the final of a trilogy of company crossovers (and Marvel did admit that Disassembled and House of M led to Seige) where Wanda was the centerpiece in the first two they decide to give SENTRY the sendoff. And this is not just "Fuck the Sentry" (But seriously, fuck the Sentry).

They dropped a lot of hints about a big surprise world-threatening villain, and a heroic redemption and such so we were down to Wanda or Bob. I was really hoping that Marvel would use that crossover to fix the mess Bendis made of Wanda Maximoff but no, the actual cleaning up for this character is to occur in a maxiseries rather than a company crossover like they fucked her over in. Yes, Heinberg is going to write a much better story, but he's going to take 9 issues bimonthly to do it and it is a side-story that other books won't tie into. That is how Wanda will be returned to sanity.

The thing is, it took THE ENTIRE MARVEL LINE to turn her into a villain and code her as baby-crazy. Every book was hijacked by House of M, and every fan reading and every writer writing got Crazy Wanda into their brains, but a single writer and a book that ties into nothing is supposed to undo that? Fucking Marvel. All those fans who read those crossovers but aren't fans enough of Wanda to read Children's Crusade, how many of Marvel's next crop of writers will be coming from that group? How long before someone decides that Womb Crazy is the real characterization, because that's the characterization she had when THEY started reading? What the fuck, seriously? That's like writing obscene lies about someone in a phone booth right where someone's eyes are looking during a call, and then instead of blacking it out you write "Not really, she's a nice person" on the inside of the handset. It's not hidden, but you certainly expended more effort making sure someone would look at the lies.

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Before you approach, you should know 3 things about me: 1) I am a Green Lantern fan. 2) I was a Green Lantern fan in the 90s too. 3) I like to add "the Foul" to the end of my name to let everyone know about my natural temperament.